Today's episode is Monkees at the Movies: Songs used: A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You, Last Train to Clarsksville and Valleri This is, to me, one of the most fun episodes of the first season. It successfully mocks the members, the show itself and Hollywood movies. Bobby Sherman gives something of a scene stealing performance as the star. 4/5.
Monkees At The Movies - A great take-off of the mid-60’s Teen Movies that starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, who would later appear in the Monkees movie Head. Future Teen Idol Bobby Sherman gives a wonderful performance as the vain and stuck up Frankie Catalina whom the Monkees wreck their revenge on. The in-jokes are aplenty in this story. This send up definitely ranks as one of the best episodes of the first season. 5/5. Note: Bobby Sherman and Davy Jones with Peter Noone would later perform together in the 1998 Teen Idols Tour.
Monkees At The Movies - 5/5 Classic episode. This is a personal fave for me. Very entertaining and funny all the way through. In just a few short years, Bobby Sherman replaced Davy Jones as a very popular teen idol. Kinda interesting also that 4 decades later in '05, Micky was a real disc jockey on FM radio (in NYC oldies radio WCBS FM 101) as he got to play one in this episode.
Stand out episode. Good gags, ironic storyline, good songs. Just the fact Bobby Sherman is a teen idol and Davy replaces him in the picture and then real life reverses that is wild. Hearing Little Bit Me is good and brings up the interesting fact that the B side had been featured twice already on the show. Love the Davy drew the short straw and I used that gag a few times because of that scene. A double dose of comedy with the volleyball scenes as the fact that whatever they were doing was not volleyball. I remember this episode back then because of the Davy LP cover. I wonder if sales increased for that LP after the show aired or if it was even in print? Always like that they talked about playing in a somewhat serious way. This episode aired April, 1967, so a somewhat quick response to the furor. Well, quick for '67 with no twitter, facebook, or instant media of any kind.
Not only was it in print since it was released in 1965 with a couple of singles pulled from it, it was reissued with a sticker hyping Davy as a “Star of The Monkees”. Colpix was the label that morphed into Colgems Records.
It's a pretty great episode and added props to Bobby Sherman for playing such a detestable character - he really goes all in. I mean that sincerely, btw. But yeah - a classic episode all around. 5/5.
Monkees at the Movies A very good episode. Again, the slightest of pretexts to get The Monkees involved in something utterly incidental. Excellent supporting cast as always. Great song. The clip at the end with Davy looking very intense and Mike focussing on the guitar solos stands out a bit. Plenty of good jokes, an amusing plot, and it features Davy's own record. 4.4/5
I’m glad that Monkees at the Movies comes so soon after Monkees a la Mode in the alphabetical list. The two episodes have a similar theme: the Monkees are invited into a strange, new culture, where they endure insults and indignities from the snobs of the in-crowd before cheerfully deciding to wreak revenge—Monkees-style. Come to think of it, that’s a natural feel-good theme to appeal to a fan base of teens and tweens. By happy coincidence, a major difference between the two episodes is that the movie episode has far more plot. In Monkees a la Mode the guys were swept instantly from obscurity to the very center of the whirlwind; in The Monkees at the Movies, on the other hand, the story has a more measured pace. The guys start out as mere extras; they are introduced gradually to the world of movie-making, lurking on the edges of the set for a while before falling victim to the star’s overblown ego. Then their schemes build up in layers: first to humiliate the pretentious Frankie, then to get Davy into the starring role, and finally to bring Davy back down to earth. The story is well structured, with several moments in the second act that gently mirror the first act. Lively dialogue, visual humor and character development are sprinkled throughout the show. It’s not vying for top-notch honors among Monkees episodes, but it does have consistent quality from start to finish—and that’s a good thing. Second Runner-Up Nitpick I’ve never lived near the ocean, so I could be mistaken—but it seems to me that the beach would be the last place you would ever want to take your record collection. Seeing Peter sitting on the sand with that stack of LPs in his lap just makes me think of how sand gets into everything. Runner-Up Nitpick “Mammoth Studios has been out of business for years!” Really? Mammoth Studios was still going strong three weeks earlier, when they filmed I’ve Got a Little Song Here. Nitpick While Frankie desperately tries to lip-synch to the variable speed record of New Girl in School, Kramm yells “CUT!” no fewer than five times. Nobody pays him any attention. Grading Monkees vs. Frankie. B Monkees vs. Kramm. A- Monkees vs. Davy. B+ Overall grade 3 out of 5
Today's episode is The Monkees on Tour: An interesting change of pace at the end of the first season. Now it doesn't really compare to many other concert behind the scenes exercises, but it's cool to be able to see and hear a little of touring life. I think the best thing about it is simply that it shows the excitement and pandemonium of an early tour. 3.5/5.
The Monkees On Tour - 5/5 Top episode, still. I probably watched this episode more than any of the others. It is filmed documentary style and a very unique episode. I think it still holds up well even after all these years. I do wish the stage footage was easier to see, lots of times it is quite dark and difficult to see the guys perform. The screaming makes the guys almost inaudible.
The Monkees on Tour - A top tier episode which is really a mini-documentary. Lots of great footage of the guys on stage, interactions with fans, as guest DJ’s, relaxing and being contemplative. Perhaps the most honest portrayal of the Monkees during this early stage of their career and the most revealing of the mania madness that surrounded them. My only gripe is the soundtrack during the concert sequences. We know that the sound for this particular concert exists in much better quality, yet, director Bob Rafelson went for the natural, ambient sound of the screaming fans that all but drowns out the group. I guess he wanted to capture the “real” atmosphere of the concert, but it would’ve been nice if the sound quality was better. A perfect first season closer. 5/5.
Something different and it certainly works and was a good way to show the live concert side of what they were doing. I have heard the interviews hundreds of times as they were on the Monkeemania 2 LP import from around 1980 I think. They certainly used Girl I Knew Somewhere in the show and it makes the most sense here as they are playing on the record and the show is about them playing in concerts. With this show winning its time slot (just reread that in original Sandoval book), the Monkees from this date April 24 for the next several months were on top of the world.
Monkees On Tour is 5/5 Love the pseudo documentary style of this episode. Even though you know parts of it are staged for filming, it’s amazing and fascinating to see them in their world off the TV set and behind the scenes. The concert footage is the real draw for me and it’s so disappointing that it seems nothing else has ever surfaced. We all want video from live in Japan from 1968, but I wonder if it’s actually more a possibility that they could find all the footage of this show and synch it with the audio. The one strange thing about it is the recording of the concert, where it looks like they purposely did not record Micky’s vocals, and also did a poor job of recording the other vocals. Maybe it was the way back then to overdub vocals on live recordings because of technical limitations of recording pop/rock concerts properly with all the screaming kids. I wish they would have done more pseudo documentaries like this for the series, like a recording session or rehearsals for a concert or even behind the scenes of filming an episode. The closest thing we ever else got was the one in Paris.
That's a really good point - it is kind of unbelievable that such a visually-oriented band (or multi-media project, or whatever) was never really filmed working on the musical side of things. A window into HQ, or the Summer '67 tour, or working on Pisces in studios in LA or on the road, would seem to be a no-brainer. Instead, there's only Phoenix, about 10 seconds of "Steppin' Stone" on the TV set ("Too Many Girls"), SLC '68 (one song), and "Listen To The Band" from 33 1/3 as the only professional documents of the full band actually making music. Anyway, Monkees On Tour is very cool and a very interesting slice of cinema verite but I wish there was more music/band-oriented stuff and less staged bits/interviews (Mike in the car has always struck me as kind of a bummer). Though I do have a soft spot for Davy vs. the swan because that really is just Maximum Davy, picking a fight with a bird. All in all, though, I just think it could have been so much more. And yeah, the grainy/dark film quality definitely kind of casts a pall over things a bit - I think it would be more immersive if it was sharper, brighter, and more colorful. But that's just picking nits. 4/5
5/5 For better or worse, does Rafelson invent "Reality TV" here? Although it's depicted as Davy's solo spot, "I Wanna Be Free" is actually the guys bashing out the Byrds meets the Ramones accompaniment. I LOVE this rendition, sounds like the template for "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend." Also ( widely available on YouTube) the full length version (minus Micky's vox... his drum kit vocal mic is AWOL the entire recording) of set closing "..Stepping Stone" is just pure garage punk. I've always thought that Dec.66/Jan.67 tour was so important... giving the guys a real morale boost to give studio sessions a go as a band. Grateful there was a filmed document of it, wonder if the four guys felt any validation after this episode aired?
Monkees on Tour This is very interesting indeed. I was tempted not not give it 5/5 due to the disappointment of not enough concert footage with high sound quality. But, I've been convinced by everyone else giving it 5/5 , Pete's banjo playing, and the as described above 'raw punk' of Stepping Stone. Compared to the scripted (or at least more conventionally scripted) episodes, this is a bit more 'Let it Be' than 'Help'. Who are the additional musicians at the concert? I hear more instruments when Mike is singing and playing maracas than I think Pete and Micky would fill in. I hear drums played when Micky is out with the mic. It's good to learn something about the real Monkees, though we have had that in many episodes with the interview segments at the end of various episodes. An episode showing them recording for Headquarters would have been fantastic. It's a great pity that they didn't do that. PCA&J was recorded during the second season, was it not? They could have shown that as well. 5/5
Boyce and Hart’s band the Candy Store Prophets back the individual Monkees during their solo sections.
